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chunky roughs

It seems my first book GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE has been underrepresented on the blog, yet this summer happens
to be the ten year anniversary of my move to Portland and beginning that book; so here’s a few snippets of the process.
For the first half year, I was miserable in Portland: stocking shelves in the hardware department at Fred Meyer,
cohabiting with drum-circle hippies, assaulted at a bus stop by six drunken rednecks, suffering from stolen checkbooks
bounced across the nation, and worst of all, missing my friends back in Milwaukee, WI. So I used it all as fuel.

Below are thumbnail roughs of pages 73 and 89. Ballpoint pen, baby. Below that are a couple of finished pages that never made it to the final book.

A sad detail is that I never saw the Oregon coast until the book was completed, nearly two years after moving here, for lack of time and funds.
Now I go almost weekly. Better yet, I was so hard up for money at the time, that when I received my printer’s comps of the third printing of CHUNKY, I took the whole box of them to Powell’s Books to sell. I specified that they were fresh from the printer and that I was the author, so the Powell’s buyer asked that I sign each copy and then bought them from me for three bucks a pop. That $150 saved me from a month of starvation.

These sketches are just beautiful. As an Oregon native, I spent most of my childhood on the coast. I remember collecting and steaming muscles and poking at deer brains, for the most part. It’s so lovely there. It’s too bad that it eluded you at first.

Kesher, if you want a copy in spanish, I’ve been told that this year the book it’s going to be reprinted by another publisher (la factoria de ideas hasn’t the rights this time) ask in your local comic shop.

I love chunky rice. He’s my soul mate. I can truly relate to the hard time you were going through while creating him, because that’s what makes him adorable. Back in the day, I wrote a review for it: http://sol.pupazzo.org/?p=78
Thank you from the heart.

I really like Chunky Rice, maybe you could make it a series and make more books of chunky rice, I really really really really really love it a lot like totally so please make it a series, oh and I can wait on how long it takes to make more of chunky rice! so thank you for making this comic! BYE!!

Hello Mr. Thompson I have a question about your book Good-Bye Chunky Rice. I am reading this in my English class and I have come up with a theory about Dandel while Chunky is gone. There were many bottles in Dandel’s house and while she was dumpster diving I noticed something. On page 65, there was a can in the dumpster labeled beer. I had made a theory that Dandel is depressed so that she is drinking. Is this true? My class disagrees with me and I want to find it out once and for all. I felt by labeling that can “BEER” it is suggesting something about Dandel. Also at the end it showed her dumping out a bottle. I believe that she is finally saying to herself, “I don’t need this to not feel pain. I am happy for you Chunky Rice and I won’t say goodbye to our memories. I am only choosing to move on with my life and I am now going through recovery.” Is this true? Please email me I have many questions.